20 December 2012

You guys, guess what! On Tuesday night? Mr. P and I ran to the mall and bought the last of our Christmas presents. That means we were DONE Christmas shopping, and we had all of our gifts IN HAND, one whole week in advance. I’m so proud of us!

(Please ignore for a moment that we leave town before Christmas, so it’s not like we had an entire week to continue shopping and/or obsessively tracking packages online. Let us have this small victory!)

So now that we have all our gifts... well, you know what that means.

(My goodness, do I adore Kid Snippets.)

In years past, I wrapped all our presents in gold kraft wrapping paper with big puffy ivory bows.

I used that wholesale-sized box of paper for years until I started to run out last year, and I had to supplement with the regular store-bought stuff. I thought perhaps this year, I could take the opportunity to invest in some new pretty paper for the first time in years (I’ve imposed a strict “use what you’ve got” policy to keep the gift wrap situation under control). Instead... I was lazy and picked up two rolls at Target. That would be a big FAIL for fancy wrapping.

This year, again... I was lazy. That’s the theme this holiday season, did you know? So I didn’t make personalized gift tags, but I did whip up a little snowflake design in Illustrator and cut them all out.

And I inexplicably went with circles, quite possibly the hardest thing to cut out. So most of the circles aren’t perfect, but no one will notice when they are actually tied on the package.

Then I just scribbled the To:/From: on the back and punched a hole with my mini hole-puncher:

And strung it onto the ribbon for the wrapped package! What ribbon? My standby tulle ribbon, obvy (purchased at the Lobby of Hobbies for 50% off, because you should never pay full price there):

Tulle ribbon is literally the only way I know how to tie a pretty bow on a package. Well, if not pretty, then at least competent-looking. I just tie a bow, then make another bow with the ends, then fluff fluff fluff. Ta-da!

It may not be the trendiest bow ever, as it’s not made of multicolor twine and jingle bells, but it’s easy!

Even though I’m keeping it simple with the wrapping this year, I’m still slow to finish it. After putting in several hours last night, I’ve got sixteen packages down!

Just... [counts on fingers] ten more to go! And that should only require, oh, six more motivational viewings of the Kid Snippets gift-wrapping video. I’m on a roll!

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I’m a real-life red-headed stepchild, recently transplanted from Nashville, TN to St. Louis, MO, with my husband, Mr. P. Here you can read about my many projects as a real-life scientist pretending to be a designer in my spare time.